Rallies for Kuznetsov’s Freedom

A day of protest for the liberation of Eduard Kuznetsov will be held throughout Western Europe next month. Kuznetsov’s French lawyer, Daniel Jacoby, announced here yesterday that dozens of meetings will be held Jan. 29 to ask the Soviet authorities to release him on grounds of ill health.

Kuznetsov was sentenced to death in the first Leningrad trial in December 1970 for having planned to hijack a plane to leave the Soviet Union and go to Israel. After a wave of world protests, the Soviet authorities commuted his sentence to 15 years in prison.

Jacoby said that Kuznetsov is seriously ill from a stomach ulcer and tuberculosis. Among the American and European writers who have called for Kuznetsov’s liberation are Raymond Aron, Simone de Beauvoir, Saul Bellow, Heinrich Boll and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Premier Menachem Begin said Wednesday night that the meeting between Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Egyptian Premier Mustapha Khalil will take place Saturday night or Sunday.